as it is and with no change of commercial policy on the
part of governments, this condition may be expected to continue. It is
an approximately static adjustment of prices. Purchasing manufactured
goods in Europe will long be profitable if they can be passed duty
free through the customhouse, while food will be somewhat cheaper in
America.

[Illustration]

_Static Wages and Interest._--As has been said, the wages of labor are
comparatively low at the right and high at the left of the figure,
while interest varies in the two regions in the same way. It is lower
in the crowded area. This is not because of the presence of many men,
for this influence alone would tend to sustain the productive power of
capital and the consequent rate of interest, and in fact the interest
on capital in Europe would be lower than it is if the population
there were sparser. The rate which prevails is fixed by the productive
power of a very large fund of artificial capital utilized by a large
population meagerly supplied with land. This last item is decisive in
the case and is a primary cause of low interest. The full statement of
these facts, made in graphic form, shows an ascending line of density
of population, as we proceed from left to right, an ascending line of
price for raw produce, a descending line of price for highly wrought
merchandise, and descending lines for wages and interest. All these
lines represent the facts in a broadly general way. They deal with
averages and not with particular rates. The labor whose earning power
descends along the line numbered 5 is of many kinds, and the produce
of which the average values vary along the lines numbered 2 and 4 is
of many varieties. The rate of ascent or descent of the lines has no
especial quantitative significance, and it is therefore not implied in
the figure that wages decline more rapidly than the other factors.
Moreover, it is such large areas as those of England, Germany, France,
or the Mississippi Valley, including both cities and rural lands,
that we have in mind when we speak of the density of population as
ascending along the line numbered 1. Anywhere we expect to find cities
containing more persons to the acre than rural districts. The purpose
of the figure is to enable us to take in at a glance five different
adjustments that in the main are to be regarded as approximately
static within the great region described as the economic center of the
world.[5]

[5] The law